Amanda Knox

Aidan wrote:

Contrex wrote:
If she was a Muslim, they'd be wiring up Old Smoky!

And I think it was Old Sparky - Old Smokey is a mountain.

Both are right:

Quote:

Old Smokey is a name given to the state prison electric chair in New Jersey, which is currently on exhibit at the New Jersey State Police Museum. In the electric chair sits an effigy of Bruno Hauptmann, the man executed in the chair after being found guilty of abducting and killing Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. in 1932, the 20-month-old son of famous aviators Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1 Reply

@Francis,

I knew I was right; I used to live in NJ. Other names include Sizzlin' Sally, Yellow Mama, and Gruesome Gertie.

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@contrex,

Oh sorry - and I grew up in New Jersey - and I didn't even know that. That's inexcusable. But now I know.
I think I was confused because we used to sing, 'On top of Old Smokey all covered with snow...etc., etc..

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

She and her boyfriend cleaned up the flat,

Liar.

McTag wrote:

and did not cooperate with the police,

Liar.

McTag wrote:

and showed little remorse or surprise,

Liar.

McTag wrote:

and did not report the death,

Didn't know about the death.

McTag wrote:

and tried to blame an innocent man,

Only because that was the only way to get the Italian police to stop hitting her.

McTag wrote:

and she had a grudge against the deceased.

Liar.

McTag wrote:

I think that would have got her convicted in most states of the USA. Especially if she was a foreigner.

Nah. We have actual standards of justice in America. We haven't had a trial like this Italian farce since the Salem witch trials.

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@oralloy,

Oralloy, your insults will not change reality.

Oralloy wrote:

Nah. We have actual standards of justice in America. We haven't had a trial like this Italian farce since the Salem witch trials.

Your simple mind assertions just don't stand in face of history.
I could cite dozens of unfair trials, but Sacco and Vanzetti comes to mind..

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@Francis,

Francis wrote:

Oralloy, your insults will not change reality.

Hardly an insult to denounce an outrageous lie. And I'm not trying to change reality in the first place.

Francis wrote:

Your simple mind assertions just don't stand in face of history.
I could cite dozens of unfair trials, but Sacco and Vanzetti comes to mind..

Hardly as bad as this trial in Italy.

Nice try, but your attempt to justify evil fails yet again.

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Oralloy wrote:

Nice try, but your attempt to justify evil fails yet again.

Not trying to justify anything.

Just pointing out your behavior in the light of the old maxime:

- Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

1 Reply

@Francis,

Francis wrote:

Just pointing out your behavior in the light of the old maxime:

- Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

The notion that I pay no attention to US injustice is patently false. This is just a straw man trying to distract from the fact that Italy is intentionally and maliciously keeping an innocent American in prison.

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@oralloy,

Oralloy - going around shouting Liar Liar Pants on Fire at MrMcT is not going to make what you say true.

You didn't respond to my post regarding Guantanamo Bay and you're interpretation of the media press you read and the media press I read. It doesn't make someone a Liar for the individuals interpretation. Your claims that all is and always has been hunkydory in Guantanamo Bay, to me, is simply not factual. Or true. It doesn't result in shouting Liar Liar tho, does it?

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@Izzie,

Izzie wrote:

Oralloy - going around shouting Liar Liar Pants on Fire at MrMcT is not going to make what you say true.

That's the interesting thing about the truth. You don't have to "make it true". It already is true.

Izzie wrote:

You didn't respond to my post regarding Guantanamo Bay

Well, it was starting to derail the thread from the topic.

Your links just pointed out that Obama was closing Guantanamo. That does not mean the conditions were unacceptable. In fact, the detainees are going to find the supermax conditions harsher than they found Guantanamo.

Izzie wrote:

It doesn't make someone a Liar for the individuals interpretation.

He stated outright falsehoods.

Passing that off as "interpretation" is absurd.

Izzie wrote:

Your claims that all is and always has been hunkydory in Guantanamo Bay, to me, is simply not factual. Or true. It doesn't result in shouting Liar Liar tho, does it?

You are misinformed about Guantanamo. But I'd prefer not to derail this thread with a discussion of that topic.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

Nah. We have actual standards of justice in America

Apparently so. Shame you don't often live up to them.

Quote:

We haven't had a trial like this Italian farce since the Salem witch trials.

As pointed out before, Guantanamo was constructed in Cuba there precisely to be out of the reach of pesky defence lawyers with their writs.
And then, the prisoners were never brought to trial. Or charged, for the most part. They were just detained, and tortured.

Compared to that, the Salem witch trials were a model of probity, efficiency and humanity.

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@OCCOM BILL,

Hey Bill

hmmmm.... see, in my little world "beyond on a reasonable doubt" would mean that 10/10 12/12 6/6 100% ... anything less than that is reasonable doubt, don't you think?

I do understand due process and the science of forensics (really, I do!) - in as much as that "fingerprint" (not a literal fingerprint), but the whole caboodle scientifically, is there to "prove" guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - I am sure that it is possible to plant evidence. Make the evidence fit.

Of course, and please believe me, I do believe in a justice system - in fact I would enjoy working within those parameters - I am glad that those who commit crimes are put behind bars. I am also glad that I have never had to make a judgement call in this sense, where someone's life is taken away - albeit the victim or the accused. I suppose I am too wishywashy.

Don't get me wrong tho Bill, tho I cannot comprehend why people commit these crimes, I do understand this is the way of the world. In the country you live in.... and I live in - the burden of guilt / innocence and the due process is different to Italy. I would hate to be the person caught up in this mess. I would also hate to be Meredith's parents not knowing who had brutally killed their daughter - and, to add insult, a guilty person be left unpunished because technicalities get them off. I don't believe the Kerchers would wish an innocent person jailed either.

No, due process was obviously not observed and an innocent person may be imprisoned. As I said earlier, I don't think the US will allow that to happen.

I believe, from what I read (which could be wrong admiteddly), that a judge has 90 days to provide an explanation of the jury's reasoning behind the verdict. I hope this will be a lot more telling of the facts.

In my cynical approach here I would also say as regards to the burden of proof / guilt... seemingly the WMD that were proved to have been in Iraq hence making 'our' case for war, in the light of day, our Primeminister admits that an argument had to made, and WMD was the one they used. Did they find them??????? 1000's of innocent lives - I believe he said something like - for the better of the world. Hmmmmmm Apologies - derailing again - my point is that "beyond reasonable doubt" is terribly difficult to prove and even when it is proven, it can be disproven.

We seem to pick and choose our fights. I do hope that Amanda's parents will continue to fight for their child and I hope that US can bring pressure to bear regarding the due process. I don't know if they can, but the US has some mighty strength.

Oralloy is seemingly unwilling to listen to any other opinions. I can't argue the case because I don't have enough facts and as you say, the media may well have / has distorted information.

However, in answer to your question

Quote:

If 3 of 8 jurors were to insist that the State failed to make it's case; do you think the other 5 jurors opinion to the contrary would equate to a finding of guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt?

I would say there is reasonable doubt.

as I said - for me, reasonable doubt would be anything less than 8/8.

That is their practice. Italy's laws. Their process. Their system.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

oralloy wrote:
Nah. We have actual standards of justice in America

Apparently so. Shame you don't often live up to them.

That is true. But it does not justify Italy's atrocity.

McTag wrote:

oralloy wrote:
We haven't had a trial like this Italian farce since the Salem witch trials.

As pointed out before, Guantanamo was constructed in Cuba there precisely to be out of the reach of pesky defence lawyers with their writs.
And then, the prisoners were never brought to trial. Or charged, for the most part. They were just detained, and tortured.

Compared to that, the Salem witch trials were a model of probity, efficiency and humanity.

"Charges and trials" have nothing to do with the detention of POWs until the end of the war.

And Guantanamo was not a torture center. The CIA did their torturing in a then-secret (now exposed) base in the heart of Europe.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

But it does not justify Italy's atrocity.

Atrocities can not be justified.

No atrocity can be justified.

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@Izzie,

Izzie wrote:

Oralloy is seemingly unwilling to listen to any other opinions.

Well, I'm unwilling to let outrageous falsehoods go unchallenged.

Opinions are not all that problematical in themselves. For example, I'm tying to take to heart ossobuco's point that there very well could be a silent majority of Italians who are not supporting this atrocity.

However, the fact that I've not yet heard an Italian even say that she might be innocent (much less that she clearly is innocent) makes it pretty hard.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

I'm tying to take to heart ossobuco's point that there very well could be a silent majority of Italians who are not supporting this atrocity.

That's good.

The silent majority point, in my opinion, is very sound.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

The US reaction has prompted this comment from British lawyer and columnist:

Much of the US reaction to the conviction of Amanda Knox has been a disgrace. I fully accept there is an argument that she should not have been convicted on the evidence. But the emphasis of many of those pleading Knox's case " including politicians and lawyers " has not been to analyse that evidence, but to mount a vicious, intemperate and xenophobic attack on Italy's legal system.

They made it seem as if Knox was convicted solely because of a corrupt system and Italy's alleged anti-Americanism. What particularly irritated me was that these outbursts came from a country that has much to be ashamed of in its own justice system. I'm not just talking about the comprehensive injustices of Guantánamo Bay. More serious, because it's been going on a long time and affects many more people, is the way many states have treated defendants, particularly poor and black defendants, accused of serious crimes including murder and rape.

The accused have routinely been represented in court by incompetent lawyers. The chances of the innocent being found guilty of serious crimes are far higher in the US than Italy. It's not Italy that executes prisoners with sub-normal IQs " as happened in Ohio last week.

Interesting commentary from a "British lawyer and columnist".

In the first place he criticizes unnamed American critics of the case for evading the issues and instead, mounting "a vicious, intemperate and xenophobic attack on Italy's legal system". In due lawyerly course he proceeds on his own vicious, intemperate and xenophobic attack on America's legal system.

To add to this rather sublime hypocrisy one need only note the recent issue of a British arrest warrant for Israel's former Foreign Minister, based on some sappy principle of universal jurisdiction. Too bad that principle wasn't applied to some of the post colonial leaders of the British Commonwealth or to the previous satraps & viceroys of the British Empire.

However, we must all become accustomed to the recent ascent of Europeans to new untravelled heights of virtue, perfection, ... and forgetfulness of their own awful histories.

The fact is the Knox case hasn't drawn that much attention here - it has never been page one news. Indeed more attention was given to the issuance of arrest warrants for various U.S. CIA agents by the Italian Judicial system. Additionally it was the conjunction of the two issues that got most of the attention.

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On Occom Bill's point or points re the italian judiciary system, specifically about percentage of the judges (my words, both the official judges and the lay judges that we call jury and summarized as judges as a group - as I understand it) that vote to convict -

I am not as nonplussed as OB that less than a 100% could elicit a conviction, even if it was only one trial - but there is, from my reading, a routinized appeal system in place with expectation of further delving into 'facts'.

I also figure the some people somewhere shake their heads about US courts considering someone not guilty when only one person out of 12 declares the tried individual not guilty. I like our system best, but it has its drawbacks (person getting away with murder, for example).

I am for the difference in systems being discussed and one or more being considered better or best, but am not supportive of the immediate outrage about the italian system on the face of it.

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@georgeob1,

Good evening, George. Very nice to see you around the place.

It's true that Americans can't hold a candle to the English in the hypocrisy stakes.

Incidentally, there has been a great new TV series here on the history of Scotland (during which I'm learning a lot I did not previously know) and I was pleased to see the considerable Scottish influence in the philosophy which went into the formulation of the Declaration of the thirteen states. John Witherspoon at Princeton and all that.

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Quote:
She may very well be guilty of this terrible crime, but this was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt

And if this were another trial in which that was true, say the trial in which OJ Simpson was acquitted of the murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson, because it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would you be defending him and speaking as his advocate? Were you happy with that verdict? Do you believe that justice was served?

I'm just curious. And just because I'm asking the question doesn't mean that I even know my own answer to that myself.
I guess it comes back to what really constitutes justice.

I believe OJ Simpson is a murder and no, I wasn't happy with the verdict. However, that trial, perhaps better than any other, demonstrates the principle of "Innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt." The fact finders in that case weren't charged with deciding whether or not he was guilty or innocent. Their responsibility was to decide if the State had proven its case, beyond a reasonable doubt. They did not.

Since no system is perfect, the $64,000 question is; would you rather have more OJ's go free, or have more Innocent people found guilty? Which in your opinion is the lesser evil?

1 Reply

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